He was sitting alone in the restaurant car. They had just brought him caviar and blinis, and a glass of vodka. The table was laid for four people, but the other chairs were unoccupied. It was a bore, having no one to talk to.
So when the waiter asked if he might seat two other gentlemen at the table, Nicolai nodded that he had no objection and looked up curiously to see what sort of companions he was getting.
The two men sat down quietly opposite him, scarcely looking at him. One was an odd-looking fellow he had never seen before.
And the other was Yevgeny Popov.
There was no mistaking him – the shock of carrot-red hair, the same greenish eyes. He had not changed much except that in his face there was now a certain maturity, a settled strength which suggested he might have suffered. Noticing that Nicolai was staring at him, he looked carefully into his face. And then, without smiling, he quietly remarked: ‘Well, Nicolai Mikhailovich, it’s been a long time.’
How strange. Though they had not met for seventeen years, Nicolai expected his former friend to look awkward. After all, Popov had used him cynically and then extorted money from his father. But Popov looked neither guilty nor defiant: he just gazed at Nicolai calmly, taking him in, asked him where he was going and on hearing said thoughtfully: ‘Ah, yes. Russka,’ before turning to his companion and remarking: ‘The big Suvorin factory is there, you know.’
And now Nicolai looked at the other man. He too was a curious-looking fellow. He might, Nicolai guessed, be in his early twenties, though his ginger hair was already receding fast. He had a small, reddish, pointed beard. His clothes and bearing suggested that he might belong to the minor provincial gentry and probably be destined for a career as a minor official of some kind.
But what a strange face.
‘This is Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov,’ Popov introduced him. ‘He’s just taken his legal exams in St Petersburg and now he’s going to be an attorney.’ The lawyer politely acknowledged Nicolai and gave him a slight, rather grim, smile.
Ulyanov? Where had Nicolai heard that name before? Though his hair was ginger, his appearance was definitely Asian. He had a stocky body, a dome-shaped head, high cheekbones, a rather broad nose and mouth and unmistakably Mongolian eyes. He didn’t look Russian at all. But that name… what was familiar about it?
Of course! Alexander Ulyanov. Four years ago a young student of that name had been mixed up with some half-baked plot to kill the Tsar. The business had been quite isolated – a madcap plan of some idiotic young people. But the unfortunate young man had refused even to apologize and had paid with his life. Nicolai remembered his own revolutionary career as a student and inwardly shuddered. Might he, in different circumstances, have done such a thing? Ulyanov. It had been a respectable family, he remembered: the father had been a schools inspector of humble origin, but had done well enough to reach the rank that gave the family hereditary nobility. He wondered if this young lawyer were anything to do with them.
For the first few minutes, the conversation was hesitant. Nicolai was curious about what his former friend had been doing but Popov gave him evasive answers, while Ulyanov seemed content to sit quietly watching them. Nicolai gathered that Popov had spent some time abroad, but that was all.
Yet it was a pity to let the opportunity go. He’s sure to be up to something, Nicolai thought. And then he’ll mysteriously disappear for another twenty years. So after a few more indirect passes he suddenly asked bluntly: ‘So tell me, Yevgeny Pavlovich, are you still working for the revolution – and when is it coming?’
He noticed Ulyanov look at Popov questioningly, and saw Popov answer with a little shrug. But nobody said anything. A few moments later, Ulyanov got up and left them for a while.
‘There’s an interesting man,’ Popov remarked pleasantly, after he had gone. ‘Where does he come from?’
‘Nowhere important: a small provincial town in the east, on the Volga. He actually owns an estate there – just a small one with a few poor peasants.’ Popov smiled wryly. ‘So he’s both a landowner and noble, technically. Don’t you recognize his name?’
Nicolai mentioned the student who was executed.
‘Exactly. This man’s his brother. The whole family were devastated at the time, of course. Vladimir was very shaken.’
‘He wouldn’t get mixed up in a plot like that himself?’
Popov grinned. ‘Vladimir Ilych is a lot more cautious.’
Nicolai commented on the lawyer’s Asiatic looks and Popov nodded. ‘You’re right. Actually, on the mother’s side I believe he’s part German and part Swedish; but the father’s family are Asiatic, certainly. They were Chuvash tribesmen.’
Of course. He should have guessed from the hair. The Chuvash were an old tribe of Asiatic origin, settled on the Volga, who frequently had reddish hair. ‘I was sure he wasn’t Russian,’ Nicolai said.
‘No. Actually, I doubt if he’s got a single drop of Russian blood in his veins.’
‘And what’s your interest in him?’ Nicolai asked.
For a moment, Popov only gazed at him blandly, saying nothing. Then, very quietly, he murmured: ‘I will tell you this, Nicolai, whatever this fellow may be, I have never met any man like him before.’
Just then, Ulyanov returned and this interesting discussion had to end. Nicolai was rather sorry. He had just been becoming curious about the quiet Chuvash lawyer-landowner. But any sense of disappointment he had was soon forgotten as Popov turned back to him and remarked with a faintly ironic smile: ‘So, Nicolai Mikhailovich, you were asking about the revolution.’
In after years it always seemed to Nicolai that the hour that followed was the most interesting he had ever spent in his life.
Popov spoke quietly, and well. Though from time to time Nicolai recognized flashes of the cold, conspiratorial fellow he had known in his student days, it soon became clear that Popov had developed into something broader since then – a man of larger ideas. A few details of his personal life also emerged. He had been married, but his wife had died. He had been sent to Siberia for three years and spent another year in prison. He had visited a number of European countries, including Britain.
Nicolai knew that, over the years, quite a number of Russian radicals had had to leave and live abroad. He had some idea of their life: constantly on the move, often travelling with forged papers and different identities; agitating, attending revolutionary conferences, writing articles for illegal journals smuggled into Russia; picking up a meagre living by tutoring and translating, or borrowing from sympathizers, or possibly stealing. It was hard not to pity this state of rootless wandering. Such people, it seemed to Nicolai, became trapped in a tiny, conspiratorial world, dedicated by sheer force of habit to the service of an idealized revolution which, quite probably, would never come.
Yet now, as he listened to Popov, it soon became clear to Nicolai that his former friend knew far more about the world than he did. Popov gave him an account of the radical movements in Western Europe, from the workers’ trades unions to the revolutionary political parties. How sophisticated they sounded, compared to anything in Russia. He gave an amusing account of some of the exiled revolutionaries abroad. But above all, as the cosmopolitan Popov explained the European situation, there was something else that struck Nicolai even more forcibly. It was his certainty.
For whereas, when he was young, Nicolai remembered men speaking of revolution and a new world order as articles of faith, he noticed that Popov now spoke in a very different manner, as if everything that was passing were part of some concrete, historical process that he well understood. When he expressed this thought, Popov smiled.